Taken together, income, occupation, and education are good measures of people’s social standing. Using a layered model of stratification, most sociologists describe the class system in the United States as divided into several classes: upper, upper middle, middle, lower middle, and lower class. The different classes are arrayed along a continuum, with those with the most money, education, and prestige at the top and those with the least at the bottom.

In the United States, the upper class owns the major share of corporate and personal wealth; it includes those who have held wealth for generations as well as those who have recently become rich. Only a very small proportion of people actually constitute the upper class, but they control vast amounts of wealth and power in the United States. Those in this class exercise enormous control throughout society. Some wealthy individuals can wield as much power as entire nations.

Despite social myths to the contrary, the best predictor of future wealth is the family into which you are born. Each year, the business magazine Forbes publishes a list of the 400 wealthiest families and individuals in the country. Of all the wealth represented on the Forbes 400 list, most is inherited, although since the 1990s, there has been some increase in the number of people on the list with self-created wealth. Those in the upper class with newly acquired wealth are known as the nouveau riche. Luxury vehicles, high-priced real estate, and exclusive holidays may mark the lifestyle of the newly rich. However, although they may have vast amounts of money, they are often not accepted into “old rich” circles.

The upper middle class includes those with high incomes and high social prestige. They tend to be well-educated professionals or business executives. Their earnings can be quite high indeed – successful business executives can earn millions of dollars a year. It is difficult to estimate exactly how many people fall into this group because of the difficulty of drawing lines between the upper, upper middle, and middle classes. Indeed, the upper middle class is often thought of as “middle class” because their lifestyle sets the standard to which many aspire, but this lifestyle is actually unattainable by most.

The middle class is hard to define, in part because being middle class is more than just economic position. A very large portion of Americans identify themselves as middle class even though they vary widely in lifestyle and in resources at their disposal. But the idea that the United States is an open-class system leads many to think that the majority have a middle-class lifestyle: thus, the middle class becomes the ubiquitous norm even though many who call themselves middle class have a tenuous hold on this class position.

The lower class is composed primarily of the displaced and poor. People in this class have little formal education and are often unemployed or working in minimum-wage jobs. People of colour and women make up a disproportionate part of this class. The poor include the working poor – those who work at least 27 hours a week but whose wages fall below the federal poverty level. Six per cent of all working people now live below the federal poverty line. The concept of the underclass has been added to the lower class. The underclass includes those who are likely to be permanently unemployed and without means of economic support. Rejected from the economic system, those in the underclass may become dependent on public assistance or illegal activities.

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